loquy and speech familiarly directed at the audience, while every once
in so often a slave, desperately bent on finding someone actually under
his nose, careens wildly cross the stage or rouses the echoes by
unmerciful battering of doors, meanwhile unburdening himself of lengthy
solo tirades with great gusto;[2] and all this dished up with a sauce of
humor often too racy and piquant for our delicate twentieth-century
palate, which has acquired a refined taste for suggestive innuendo, but
never relishes calling a spade by its own name.

If we have sought an explanation of our poet's gentle foibles in the
commentaries to our college texts, we have assuredly been disappointed.
Even to the seminarian in Plautus little satisfaction has been vouchsafed.
We are often greeted by the enthusiastic comments of German critics, which
run riot in elaborate analyses of plot and character and inform us that we
are reading _Meisterwerke_ of comic drama.[3] Our perplexity has perhaps
become focused upon two leading questions; first: "What manner of drama is
this after all? Is it comedy, farce, opera bouffe or mere extravaganza?"
Second: "How was it done? What was the technique of acting employed to
represent in particular the peculiarly extravagant scenes?"[4]

There is an interesting contrast between the published editions of Plautus
and Bernard Shaw. Shaw's plays we find interlaced with an elaborate
network of stage direction that enables us to visualize the movements of
the characters even to extreme minutiae. In the text of Plautus we find
nothing but the dialogue, and in the college editions only such
editorially-inserted "stage-business" as is fairly evident from the spoken
lines. The answer then to our second question: "How was it done?", at
least does not lie on the surface of the text.

For an adequate answer to both our questions the following elements are
necessary; first: a digest of Plautine criticism; second: a resume of the
evidence as to original performances of the plays, including a
consideration of the audience, the actors and of the gestures and
stage-business employed by the latter; third: a critical analysis of the
plays themselves, with a view to cataloguing Plautus' dramatic methods. We
hope by these means to obtain a conclusive reply to both our leading
questions.

Sec.1. Critics of Plautus

Plautine criticism has displayed many different angles. As in most things,
time helps resolve the discrepancies.